Self-Injury: a journey down the rabbit hole.
The Mayo clinic defines self injury this way "No-suicidal self injury often simply called self injury, is the act of deliberately harming the surface of your own body such as by cutting, burning, digging your nails into the skin, biting, hitting yourself. It is typically not meant as a suicide attempt. Rather, this type of self injury is an unhealthy way to cope with emotional pain, intense anger and frustration, let downs, overwhelming sadness due to an event.
First I would like to tell everyone that I was a cutter for many years. So, this a
rticle is written from both personal experience and research. I came across several lists of personality traits that of the self- injurer. I disagree with them, but I am going to list them anyway. The personality traits make the person that self harms mentally unstable. A person that self harms is in no way mentally unstable. They may be unstable in their ability to cope, their family life may be unstable, they are bullied and have immense emotional distress. There are many reasons that lead to self injury in a person.
Here is the list of personality traits that I found, they are:
Strongly dislike and invalidate themselves.
Are overly sensitive to rejection.
Are chronically angry usually at themselves.
Tend to suppress their anger or do not know how to "get angry"
Have high level of aggressive feelings, which they disapprove of strongly and often suppress or turn inward.
Are more impulsive and lacking in impulse control.
Tend to act in accordance with their mood of the moment, basing actions on inappropriate emotions.
Tend not to plan for the future.
Are depressed and can be suicidal/self destructive.
Suffer from chronic anxiety, social anxiety and can have frequent bouts of crying and panic attacks.
Tend toward irritability.
Do not see themselves as skilled at coping. They do not know how to generally handle strong emotions.
They have a very low self -esteem, low opinion of themselves, consider themselves a failure.
Do not think they have much control over how/wither they can cope with things in their daily lives. They are usually bullied, feel alone, have few friends, are failing in school, feel abandoned by their family and feel nobody loves them.
Tend to be avoidant. They avoid situations that are anxiety producing like giving an oral report in front of the class. Situations that might be embarrassing, that they aren't very good at like when talking with authority, that are anxiety producing for them because of the possibility that they won't do good at it and will be ridiculed.
Do not see themselves as empowered; they see themselves as a victim. They see themselves in a way that is very belittling to them, they are a failure, and will fail if they try, somebody will laugh at them they just know it, etc.
There are other traits threat can be developed due to overwhelming stress such as from chronic bullying, Abuse, Drugs, sexual assault, performance anxiety that doesn't go away, unreasonable expectations placed on them from their parents, being a middle childand having a "perfect" sister or brother and having to live up to and follow in their "perfect" footsteps. There are many different causes of the emotional and mental turmoil that lead to a person's decision to self injure. This can include having friends that do and they just want to "try" it to see why their what their friends get from the act. It can also be done, at first, as a way of "getting back" or punishing their parents. Please Do Not ever think that a person is "doing it for attention" as that kind of attention is negative and seldom wanted. That kind of attention is far more detrimental to ones perception of themselves then just about any other kind. And a person that self injures in a way is doing it for attention...the kind that's needed!!
There are some things about self injury that I would like to point out. One it is very addictive and can lead to a dependence on it just like any drug. The person cannot "get by" a day without it and must perform the act several times a day even when they have no reason to. There is also the need to cut, burn, scratch, bite, dig their nails into their skin, at ever-increasing rates and a need to cause more and more damage to their skin. This goes hand in hand with the addictiveness of the act. Then there is the improper wound care. Using dirty razor blades, second and third degree burns that are not cared for, unintentional suicide, punishment, mental hospitalization, being stigmatized or labeled, peers avoiding them as they are seen as 'defective' now, visit to the hospital from infection, parental scorn, being bullied worse, and so many other really negative things can happen. Mainly because people cannot understand the rationality behind self injury. They consider it gross, unacceptable in today's society. They cannot understand someone that would intentionally harm themselves. They view this behavior as "sick", "mental", they label you "bad" because you chose to give yourself a kind of first aide that most people wouldn't even consider. I'm going to give my view on self injury by putting it in a question. "You wouldn't ask a drowning person to give up their life preserver would you? Then why do you ask a person that self- harms to give up theirs?" I have a different opinion on self harm, mainly cutting or burning,then most people. As you could probably tell I actually believe in self harm as a viable alternative to psychotropic medication that you get from a psychiatrist. I call it a "first aide" for internal struggle and pain. You have a headache you take an aspirin, You have a cold you go to your local drug store and get some OTC cold medication, you have an infection you got to the doctor and he gives you an antibiotic medication, your into eastern alternative medication then you get acupuncture and do yoga or Ti-Chi and meditate. So what do you do if you have this increasingly painful and at times overwhelming internal pain that you cannot cope with? You either have to go to a psychiatrist and get put on psychotropic medication, the worst medication one can take. As Itchanges your brains chemical makeup, the electrical impulses and processes. In my opinion, it makes you more depressed and more mentally unstable and can easily cause worsening depression, worsening forms of anxiety, and can lead to suicide. There is a black box warning on most anti depressant medications that warns the medication can lead to suicidal ideation or attempts in children under 18. At a time when the brain isn't even fully grown this type of medication should never be used.( sorry for the rant) You either go to a therapist who you see for an hour a week, and since he really isn't involved in your daily life, he only knows about the things causing you so much internal pain and dysfunction. But he really cannot help you with these issues so you continue on your daily routine scared, in pain, not being able to cope, anxious and just getting more and more depressed and possibly you've already thought about suicide. Or you can try dealing with the situation in a strictly alternative way. You can self injure. I do not tell anyone that they should start. In fact If there is any other way to cope with the stresses and anxiety producing things on your life I would highly recommend that. I will never tell anyone who self injures that they should stop or promise me that they will throw away their form of "medicine". One of the hardest things for a person that self injures is to trust or depend on anyone. They see themselves as flawed already and you telling them "that's just sick", "please for me stop", "promise me that you wont do it anymore". The self injurer already blame themselves for so many things, they think they are flawed and bad. I have found from talking with many people that are self injurer's that they had tried everything they could think of, from talking to school counselors, to their parents, to friends and NOTHING they did worked. The pain was still just as real. I would ask them if they had considered self- injury and if they have maybe they should try just to see, that self injury very well may be the thing that works to calm those monsters in your head that keep screaming at you and quiet them for awhile.
Self- injury is a way to cope with overwhelming internal pain. I call it suicide prevention. The act of harming oneself causes many biologic changes in the body. It releases endorphins, slows many of the body's autonomic functions, it calms and clears the mind, for a short time it can have a very real calming effect on the person. I've heard it said like this from one person "Everything seems in place. Like it is right just for a short time and the pain is gone..and I can smile instead of cry."
The thing that I always get hung up on is self injury is nothing more then a symptom of a greater disease. If you heal the disease ie bullying, inability to cope with today's stresses, overly anxious about most things, the internal buildup of the pain etc then the symptom , self injury, will no longer be need and the behavior will stop. It will no longer be needed. That's the one thing about self injury that most people don't understand. When the internal pain subsides, when you are better able to cope in a non-dysfunctionalway with the daily stresses that caused you to turn to self- injury, self injury will no longer be turned to.
Now I would like to share with you some of my reasons for turning to self- injury, they are:
I hate myself.
I cant do anything right, I'm such a failure.
I'm so fat and ugly.
Everyone hates me.
My parents hate me they tell me all the time.
Abuse
"Why can't you be more like your sister Adalaine? God, you can't do anything right.'
Don't touch that you'll just break it"
Your so stupid. Why didn't you die at birth?
Your such a waist
Nobody loves me.
I am bullied so bad. I've been bullied since kindergarten.
I wish I was dead. But the family needs me to continue in hell.
I never told anyone. I kept it "his little secret"
I cant do anything right. I fail at everything. I'll never be anything.
I had dreams. they have all dried up and flown away.
I'm so fucking depressed.
I have no friends, the only time anyone pays attention to me is to bully me, beat me up, make fun of me.
I hate my life. Why can't anything good ever happen? This same feeling that I've been blamed for a horrible sin that I didn't commit has been there since first grade
Mom and Dad say that I'm evil and they wish I would die..
I hate my stepdad. He does horrible things to me, he beats me up constantly for no reason, He makes me sleep with his friends I'm only in fucking 6th grade, I know why he hates me...because I'm so stupid.
When a person decides that self injury is an option they have already come to there personal end. They have already thought about suicide. Nothing else has worked for them and they usually are in a hopeless, helpless, frustrated way. There are several things that you really should consider learning once you have decided that it's the only thing that you can do. One is learn proper wound care! This is very important. Another is learn how to stop a cut vein from bleeding. It will happen and the best thing you can do in that moment is know how to stop a bleeding vein. ( apply pressure, I would keep packing tape 2" wide handy, then I would wrap it over the cut vein with lots of pressure, then wait for the blood to coagulate and stop. Usually within ten minutes )
There are also considerations to be made. For one, how will people look at you after you have stopped cutting and you have visible scars from it? What will employers think? The chances of a guy dating someone with visible scars is an "at best" scenario. They will have already judged you and made up their minds that your damaged goods or a little mental. And how will you see those scars in a few years? They tell a story. One of heartbreak, sadness, pain to dealing with those things in the best way that you could, you likely prevented another suicide, To finally finding the solution that you needed so that you could stop self injury. The thing is..in a few years you will be out of high school, you will either be in College, have been excepted to a university, joined the military, gotten your first job and thinking of moving out and starting your life. Bullies will be a thing of the past. College doesn't play those cowardly games. It seems to be a high school thing. Your boss isn't going to care how mean your parents were to you or that your sister stole your boyfriend or that you were bullied everyday or that you had a hard childhood. The only thing your going to be judged on is your character and moral value, your abilities as a person, your kind of ethics. Things like that,stuff that really matters in your life. Not what your wearing or how many days a week you hang out at the mall or if you're a lesbian or gay, what kind of car you drive, if your rich or your poor, live in a one story house or two story one or an apartment, if your dating someone or not, how many friends you have on facebook, none of the social norms that you are so important in high school will matter. You will be judged 100% on you. Things that you think matter so much in your life now, they won't even be relevantin 3-4 years. That's just something to consider.
With that said I have one more thing that I would like to point out about self injury. There are just as many reasons that someone turns to self injury as there are days of the year. The reason you self injure won't be the same reason that your friends that do. It will be the overwhelming internal pain that part of it will be the same. What caused that pain will be different. For them it might be parental dysfunction and family bickering, Abuse, There boyfriend is physically abusive, what ever the reason. The affects of it are still the same. It calms, makes everything seem ok for a little while, its put you into a trance like dissociated state that is like a shield from the world and for that little while you can't hear your parents yelling at you, you don't think about the bully that told you to kill yourself today, the monsters yelling at you in your head have finally stopped, your calm and you feel relaxed and the pressures of the day have finally melted away. But it doesn't last. A feeling of guilt will begin to settle in, you will start to blame yourself again for not being so strong, for not able to quit, for being such a failure. The tears will start again, you will cry yourself to sleep and the monsters now have another thing they can scream and blame you with. It's a cyclical thing. It's only a stop gap not the solution. It's a temporary solution to a temporary event. If you really want to stop the internal pain then Google "alternatives to self injury", learn about "thinking errors" and how you can best change those. Chances are, if you have a really low self esteem and don't like yourself very much then you are using several of them. There are eleven of them to include "black and white thinking" , "discounting" , " all or nothing thinking" , "filtering out thepositive" ,"mind reading" , "catastrophizing" , "personalization" these are basically the main ones. Here is a link that will help: 10 thinking errors that will crush your mental strength https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201501/10-thinking-errors-will-crush-your-mental-strength .
The premise is 'change the way that you think...you change your whole outlook on yourself and your surroundings. You will begin to appreciate yourself more, you will view situations differently and you will start to see that your changing the way that you interact with others, how you problem solve, your confidence will go way up and the best part of all..it didn't cost you anything but it had a return on that investment that will be a positive in your life for your whole life. The best way to solve the self injuryissue is to learn other ways to cope. Your coping skills right now are probably none. You can Google coping skills and learn about alternative ways to handling things. Again, change your way of thinking and you will change every aspect of the way you think about things right now. It really is better then self- injury.
I have tried to give you some alternative views on self- injury, what it is, who does it, and brief alternative to starting. Ones that will help you quit self-injury or at least slow down If your are presently using self- injury. I listed a few ways ideas that will help you on your way to better being able to cope with things in your life that are over stressing you. They are the same for the person that is currently a self-injurer or thinking of starting. There is really only one way to break the victim cycle and take you life into your own hands, not running from life's stresses, not letting them control you in a very negative, dysfunctional way. You grow by facing them, learning that you can handle it, that you can better it. There is only one way that you canbetter deal with the things in your life that are so hard to deal with right now and that is learning better ways to cope with emotional turmoil. You will use coping skills in every aspect of your life..from now until the day you die and every season in between. Self -injury doesn't have to be your only method of coping. Coping is a skill. One that you learn and then have to practice it to get better at it. Self-injury is avoidance at its best. Looking away from the problem until it has you in a choke- hold and you can only whimper and play victim. You don't have to go that route as there are ways to combat low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, fear, not having confidence, etc.
Self-injury, when resorted to, is still only a temporary. It doesn't solve the problem that is causing you to falter and be so depressed, anxious and fearful. You are in full control of your life. You are responsible for what happens to you in your life andthe direction your life will take. NOBODY ELSE IS...ONLY YOURSELF. And this will be very harsh but it is still the truth, You are to blame for your inability to cope. You are to blame for a lot of the situations that cause you stress .You are responsible for being bullied. If you told that bully f*ck off and didn't allow him to bully you, he would not be able to. I was bullied K-12..i never blamed myself or thought to myself "why am I letting this buffoon treat me like this?" I let fear interfere. There were other things that played a roll but fear was the main one. You are responsible for your actions and the consequences of those actions. Nobody else's!!! Your aloud to say "NO", your aloud to not like someone and not think badly of yourself for it, Your aloud to walkaway from a coward bully and not have to fear him/her. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY TO YOURSELF "I COME FIRST, ME, MYSELF AND I. MY NEEDS WILL ALWAYS COME FIRST BEFORE ANYONES, YOU HAVE THE RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY TO YOURSELF TO MAKE DESCISIONS BASED ON HOW THEY ARE GOING TO AFFECT YOU AND NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT SALLY OR HOW ITS GOING TO MAKE HER FEEL, THAT'S ON HER NOT YOU, YOU HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO YOURSELF TO LEARN ABOUT YOURSELF , TO QUESTION YOUR MOTIVES, QUESTION THINGS LIKE "WHY AM I THINKING THIS WAY IT DOESN'T DO ANYTHING FOR ME, DO I WANT TO KEEP THINKING THAT WAY OR CHANGE IT, WHY DO I FEEL THIS WAY RIGHT NOW? IS THIS THE WAY I WANT TO BE FEEKLING (scared,anxious,sad,angry etc), You have an obligation to yourself to change those things about you thatyou don't like. To stop behaviors that you don't like about yourself that only detract from you not add to you.
Fear is one of those things that destroys never builds one up. It does have its positive sides btu that is only when it is making you more aware of your surroundings, stuff like that. But in the every- day life of school, job, it has no place in our life. It only breeds low self- esteem, low or no confidence, the inability to do new things or even try at them because of fear. Fear is an unfounded, self- persecutor that we graciously give it the keys to our life and let it run us into a weeping mass in a corner sucking our thumbs and wishing for mommy. Fear has ONLY as much power over you as you allow it to have. Did you get that? Fear cannot do ANYTHING to us, or against us unless, we ourselves , give it permission to blind us, control us, keep us from doing things that we really want to try doing. And it is the number one reason why someone will resort to self injury. Think about it, they are bullied all day long and the only reason that that bully is bullying them is their fear. You want to try out for the cheer..but you don't. Instead, because of fear, You make excuses, you tell yourself "I would just fail , anyway, besides I'm fat and ugly anyway. So you don't try out. You want to try and get a job at "Hot Topic"...because of your fear of social situations, you tell yourselfthat you wouldn't really like it, and it is a stupid job anyway. So because of fear, you let it control how you think about things, control how you dress ,control how you interact with others, how you don't ever try out for anything you want, all the liesyou tell yourself constantly keeping you the victim. You have been letting it control your every waking moment for years. Have you ever asked yourself how did it get so powerful in your life. Have you ever wondered ? maybe you should give it some thought. Before you do consider this. What would have happened if I didn't let my fear keep me from trying out for the cheer team. I would, maybe, be a cheerleader right now. Maybe I wouldn't have made the team. what would have happened to me if I didn't make the team? At least I went for it. What would have happened if I didn't let fear dictate to me how I acted in social situations? Because of fear, I have no friends and mainly hang out in my room isolating. What would have happened if I went to the mall and talked to people? I might even make a friend and realize I am actually having fun. What would Happen if you didn't let fear tell you that you "cant" so you don't even try. Maybe while at the mall you could walk into "Hot Topic", ask for an application and actually talk to the cute help while you are Filling out the application and turn it in. Then in 3 days you get a call from "hot Topic" to come in for an interview. But, instead you let your fear talk you out of going to the mall, maybe meeting a new friend, and talking to a cute guy at "Hot Topic" while filling out and turning in an application to a place you really wanted to work. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? Fear has no power unless YOU give it to it! The worse thing that could happen is that you are told "no" or sorry but maybe next time. Or that you made a mistake at something you tried. Did you know that mistakes are how one learns how to do just about anything in life? Without making mistakes we would never better ourselves or get better at anythingwe attempt. Mistakes are not failures and doesn't make a person one. They are life way's of giving us necessary lessons to better ourselves, to be able to make better judgments, to help us know which lessons in life that will best suit us. Every aspect of life involves the making of mistakes. Is there something that you can do really good? Like playing an instrument, swimming, marching band, chess or math team, debate, speech? Without making mistakes at an almost hourly rate at first..would you have ever gotten to where you can do it automatically without really thinking it? Like driving a car. Skateboarding, even walking would not be possible without having made mistakes along the way. What if fear would have stopped you from taking those first steps knowing youwould fall? What if fear stopped you taking the driving test at the D.M.V to get your driving license? You would still be taking the public transportation. YOU see how we let fear stop us from doing some things yet we don't pay it any attention when doing other things..like taking the driving test. That's what would happen in just about any situation that we let fear lie to us and stop us.
Ill end this here. Thank you for reading all the way thru. I hope that this has been helpful to you in some way.
Adalaine Marie
12/19/2016